


Nod

by wimblydonner



Category: Persona 4
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 15:07:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2472641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wimblydonner/pseuds/wimblydonner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ai and Rise have a shared past, and that means they have a relationship whether they talk about it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nod

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Samuraiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samuraiter/gifts).



> Written for Femslash Exchange 2014. Prompt: _Interpretation of canon (or slight AU) in which Rise knew Ai long before returning to Inaba. They might have been friends, they might have been rivals, but everything happening around town is subtly changing the dynamic they had before._

It starts off with just a nod in the halls.

If Rise came to Inaba to get away from the pressures of showbiz, there's one aspect of her past she hasn't left behind: Ai Ebihara, passing her in the halls, giving her a curt nod to acknowledge what they're now both thinking: _That's right. I know you from my old school_. 

It's not that she was ever really _friends_ with Rise at their old school--which is why she doesn't _say_ anything to her--but she wants to make sure that Rise knows where they both stand. She knows Rise isn't stupid (even if she plays that way for the audience), so she doesn't bother ask whether Rise remembers her, nor does she dare try to play dumb about it herself. It's understood in the first meeting of eyes that they both know in full detail the relationship, the _thing_ , that now exists between them. If Rise is positioned to blow the lid on Ai's days as Piggy-hara, so too is Ai able to dish dirt on Risette. It's a kind of mutually assured destruction. Spill my secrets, the look says, and I'll spill yours. 

Of course, she doesn't really have anything _against_ Risette--not like she does Chie, awful Chie, who doesn't work a quarter as hard as Ai yet somehow has Kou's affections. But Ai hates the idea of anyone holding anything over her, of being once again in a position where she can't control what people say about her. She's glad she has just as much leverage over Rise. 

And so she makes sure at every opportunity that Risette remembers that Piggy-hara knows her just as much as Risette knows Piggy-hara. When she's putting on her gym uniform, steeling herself against old memories and wondering if Rise is thinking about how ungainly and not-slender Ai used to be, she can glare back at Rise and remember the naïve, neon-colored mess that was Risette's first photo book and how Rise ducked out of school crying after it gave everyone the giggles. When they both end up on the train into the city at the same time, she knows they're among just a handful of people in this podunk town who are actually willing to get out of there. When she's putting on her makeup in the bathroom, she glances over at Rise stepping in from the hall, and feels glad that there's _someone_ here who remembers her old self and can appreciate how hard she's worked to become who she's become. 

And when Rise appears on the Midnight Channel and then goes missing for a few days, her absence is chilling. Ai looks out across the sea of Yasogami students, students whose approval (or fear) simply constitutes points in the game she plays, and her gaze remains set adrift, failing to connect with anyone or anything. She realizes she's now achieved her goal of separating herself completely from the past--there's no one left who remembers what she used to be like--and it's only made her feel emptier. She is all facade, no stonework. 

Rise reappears a few days later, with no real explanation. A feeling of relief washes through Ai's body the first time she sees Rise back at her shoe locker, like nervousness flooding out of an uncorked bottle. She feels compelled to say something to her. "Hey," she says, again as they pass in the halls. It's a tiny gesture that wouldn't matter at all except for the fact that it's the first actual thing she'd said to Rise in Inaba. 

Rise smiles back. "Hey." 

They sound like old colleagues, and perhaps they are, because these secrets have created a link between them whether they talk about it or not. 

And yet every time Ai sees her, Risette seems less and less concerned with acknowledging her. Over the months, Rise's glances at Ai shorten, her face is already serious even before she sees Ai, and her pace no longer comes to a startled halt whenever she sees her past has come back to haunt her. Half of the time she's surrounded by her new crowd of friends--Chie, Souji, the Detective Prince--and wrapped up in conversation. It's as if Rise suddenly has bigger fish to fry, as if she's now concerned with keeping some even greater secret under wraps. 

To most of the rest of the school, Rise seems motivated, focused, no longer so depressed, and with new friends to boot. 

But to Ai, this is an unforgivable renouncing of their shared past. She realizes now that she's come to count on each brief rendezvous as one of the few actual connections she's made at Yasogami High, that she feels less alienated and more human knowing that there's someone who actually knows something about her beyond the image she's created for herself. For the first time, she _wants_ someone who remembers the old Ai Piggyhara, who knows the full story of her life. 

Ai reminds Rise of what she's leaving behind by, one morning, slipping a copy of the old, hated photobook into Rise's shoe locker. She's not exactly what she _means_ by it, except that it didn't seem fair for Rise to forget her past if Ai hadn't managed to escape her own yet. 

The effect is quick: The moment lunch starts, Rise is waiting at her classroom door to pin her down for a conversation. "What is this?" she says. She waves the book--wrapped in a bag, so no one else sees it. "Is this a threat? I thought we were friends, Ai." 

Ai doesn't know Rise arrived at that conclusion, considering they've spoken all of one word to each other over the past few months, but maybe it is time to run with something like that. 

So she improvises. "I thought you'd want them all out of circulation. So to speak. Doing you a favor, you know." 

"Oh." Rise buys the lie, because she now looks chagrined and puts the book away. "Well, you could have told me. We never talk, you know." 

"Yeah." Ai edges closer to Rise, out of the way of the passing students. Her hand is almost touching Rise's already, and Ai lets herself just do it, trailing her fingers gently down Rise's hand before lightly taking hold of it. "Maybe we should start."

**Author's Note:**

> This was really more like pre-slash, but I hope it works!


End file.
